Work Text:
-Yushi-
The dorm went quieter after midnight. Never truly silent.
There were too many lives folded into it for that.
Some trace of someone always remained behind: a cup left near the sink,
a toy car abandoned under the table, and Ttalgi, their little bunny, shifting in his tunnel until he found the best spot to sleep.
But the noises eased.
Doors had closed and lights had gone out one by one.
Yushi stood outside Sion’s room for a second, his thoughts still full of Sakuya even though the Minecraft match had ended ten minutes ago.
One round had turned into three, then into a stupid argument about strategy, then Sakuya accusing him of sabotage so dramatically that Yushi nearly dropped the snacks between them.
After that they had started another one anyway, both too competitive to leave it there.
Sakuya had yawned halfway through calling him a traitor, then flopped across his bed and declared he was done for the night.
Yushi had called him dramatic.
Sakuya had still insisted he was the winner, even though Yushi had won.
Yushi had left him smiling.
He still had that easy mood on him now as he pushed open Sion’s door without knocking.
The room was dim except for the bedside lamp.
Warm light caught on the edge of the blanket, on the charger cable trailing over the nightstand, on Sion himself where he sat against the headboard in a dark tank top, one knee bent, his phone loose in one hand.
He looked up immediately.
There was always something slightly unfair about that first look.
The way Sion’s whole attention landed so completely.
Even tired, even late, after a full day, his gaze found Yushi like it had been waiting for him.
“You’re alive,” Sion said.
Yushi shut the door behind him and leaned against it for a second.
“Barely.”
“That bad?”
“Sakuya gets worse the more he loses.”
Sion’s mouth curved.
“That’s true. And loud. I could hear him yelling and cheering through closed doors.”
Yushi laughed softly and crossed the room.
“You say that like you’ve never seen yourself get competitive.”
“Me? I don’t get competitive.”
Yushi stopped beside the bed and stared down at him.
“Hyung, you’re such a liar right now.”
Sion set his phone aside.
“I’m just determined to defeat every challenger.”
“Okay. Which is basically what I said. Competitive.”
Yushi gave him a slight disbelieving look.
“Fine,” Sion said, lifting his hands to make little quotation marks in the air.
“I know someone who is more ‘competitive’ than I am. You, Ushiya.”
“No. Also not true.”
Sion looked up at him with that calm, unreadable expression that usually meant he knew he was being impossible and was enjoying it.
“Did you come here to argue with me or sleep?”
Yushi stood there for another second, then reached down and tugged lightly at Sion’s blanket.
“Maybe both.”
That made Sion’s expression soften at once.
It was a small shift, tiny enough that other people might have missed it.
Yushi never did. He had learned the quiet versions of Sion’s affection long before anyone else could have named them.
The way his eyes changed first, or his shoulders loosened.
The way all that steadiness became something warmer when it turned toward him.
“Come here, then,” Sion said.
Yushi climbed onto the bed without much grace, one knee first, then the other.
He did not lie down right away, only stayed close until Sion reached automatically for his waist.
That touch alone made something in him settle.
A long day could leave him restless, all that noise and motion still caught under his skin.
Then Sion put a hand on him, and his body remembered the way back to itself.
“You smell like someone else’s room,” Sion murmured.
Yushi blinked and gave a small, offended gasp.
“Excuse me?”
“Not an insult.”
“It sounded like one.”
Sion’s hand moved once over his side, slow and easy, his thumb brushing through the fabric of Yushi’s shirt.
“You smell like fabric softener, instant ramen, and Sakuya’s bad decisions.”
Yushi let out a startled laugh.
“That is absolutely an insult. What even counts as one of Sakuya’s bad decisions?”
“Cheesy ramen with jelly drinks, for one.” Sion’s mouth twitched.
“It’s just an observation, baby.”
“You’re impossible at night.”
“And still, you came here.”
Yushi tipped his head.
“Yeah. Maybe I missed you.”
“Maybe?”
“Don’t get pleased with yourself.”
Sion’s thumb pressed lightly into his waist.
“I’m too tired to be that pleased with myself.”
“Sure. That’s never stopped you before.”
This time Sion did smile, properly.
It made Yushi’s chest go warm in that familiar way that still caught him off guard. He had known Sion too long to be surprised by his face.
It happened anyway.
Yushi reached out and pushed a hand through his hair.
Sion’s eyes lowered for half a second.
There it was.
That quiet, nearly invisible response.
The one that always made Yushi feel too fond and too gone all at once.
“You’re tired, Hyungie. Your eyebags are darker now,” Yushi said softly.
“So are yours.”
“I was playing Minecraft.”
“As if that means you can’t be tired.”
Yushi huffed and let himself sink down onto the mattress beside him, shoulder brushing Sion’s chest.
“It was serious.”
“I’m sure it was.”
“Later on we were under attack.”
Sion turned his head slightly, unimpressed.
“Got it. A moment of silence for your controller.”
Yushi stared at him, then laughed despite himself.
“You have no respect for what I’ve been through.”
Sion turned his head and kissed his temple with such easy precision that Yushi nearly lost the thread of the joke altogether.
“No,” Sion said. “I have plenty.”
Yushi went still for a moment.
The softness of it got him more than teasing ever could.
Sion did that too easily.
Said one simple thing in that low, unshowy voice and left Yushi feeling as if the whole room had shifted around it.
He turned his face, and Sion kissed him properly this time.
Slowly at first.
The kiss was unhurried, carrying the shape of the hour inside it.
Just Sion’s mouth moving over his with that familiar patience that always made Yushi melt faster than he wanted to.
He kissed him back more deeply on instinct, and Sion made a quiet sound before lifting a hand to the back of his neck.
Yushi’s eyes closed.
He loved kissing Sion like this. Late. Tired. Private.
There was something especially intimate about the softness that arrived after everything else had fallen away.
The idol version of them did not live here.
Only breath, the bed dipping beneath them, and Sion’s fingers in his hair.
Yushi shifted closer until he was half over him without deciding to be, one hand braced beside Sion’s shoulder, one knee sliding between Sion’s legs as naturally as breathing.
When he pulled back, Sion looked up at him with a kind of sleepy focus that made his pulse jump.
“What?” Yushi asked.
“You’re clingier when you’ve had a long day.”
Yushi narrowed his eyes.
“That’s a dangerous thing to say to someone currently above you.”
Sion’s hand slid from his neck to his hip.
“And yet I said it.”
Yushi should have argued.
Instead he leaned in and kissed him again, mostly to stop himself from smiling.
That did not help either.
Sion kissed him back with more heat this time, one hand anchoring him at the waist while the other drifted lightly up his back beneath the fall of his shirt.
It carried no urgency, only a warmer pull, a closer one.
When Sion used his tongue, Yushi felt it everywhere at once.
He had to swallow against the reaction that rose too quickly in him, hiding it the way he always did when tiredness made him softer and more easily undone.
That was what Yushi liked best about this part of them, maybe.
Nothing had to be rushed to feel intense.
Sion could touch him gently and still leave him undone, as if one careful touch already knew exactly where to land.
When they drew apart, Yushi stayed close enough that their noses nearly brushed.
“I don’t want to go back yet,” he admitted.
Sion’s gaze flicked over his face, lingered at his eyes for a second, then dropped briefly to his mouth before returning.
“Then don’t.”
Yushi had to hide a smile at that familiar pattern of Sion’s gaze.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that.”
Yushi looked at him for another second, searching for the joke, but there wasn’t one.
Sion only looked calm and certain, entirely sincere.
He folded one hand into the front of Sion’s shirt and looked down at it for a moment.
“I know it’s stupid.”
“What is?”
“This.” He gestured vaguely between them, the room, the hour, all of it.
“Coming here because I don’t want the day to be over yet.”
“That isn’t stupid,” Sion said.
Yushi shrugged, suddenly unable to look at him.
Sion touched his chin and tipped it back up with quiet insistence.
“Ushiya.”
Yushi met his eyes again. Sion’s voice had gone softer now.
“You come here because you want to be with me. I don’t know what part of that you think I’d ever call stupid.”
That did it.
Yushi stared at him, caught between laughter and something much more fragile.
“You really can’t say things like that this late.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m already half out of it."
“I noticed.”
“And emotional.”
“I noticed that too.”
Yushi made a face and let himself drop forward until his forehead rested against Sion’s shoulder.
Sion laughed under his breath and wrapped both arms around him without hesitation.
There was no better place, Yushi thought, than being held by someone who already knew exactly what to do with his silence.
He breathed Sion in for a second. Clean soap.
The faint trace of fabric softener from the sheets.
That room spray his friend had brought him once, subtle and woody and faintly fresh, like it belonged to Sion now more than the bottle it came in.
Home, in the shape his body had learned best.
Sion rubbed a slow hand up his back.
The touch lingered at the base of his neck, then drifted down again, unhurried enough to make Yushi aware of every place they met.
The heat caught between them under the blanket and through their clothes made his breath catch a little.
He ignored that quickly, before the moment could tilt any further.
“Do you want to stay?” Sion asked.
Yushi nodded against his shoulder.
“Talk to me,” Sion said.
“Yes,” Yushi mumbled. “I want to stay.”
“Okay.”
Yushi lifted his head. “Okay?”
“Okay.”
“That easy?”
Sion looked at him like the answer should have been obvious from the beginning. “You’re already here, baby.”
Maybe that did explain everything.
Yushi looked at him for a long moment, then reached up and touched his face with both hands.
Sion went quiet immediately, still in the way he always got when affection reached him somewhere deeper than expected.
Yushi brushed his thumbs once over his cheeks, then over the edge of his jaw.
“You’re really handsome tonight.”
That got a different look out of Sion. Amused, but slightly caught off guard.
“Tonight?” Sion asked.
Yushi’s mouth curved.
“Mhm. Sleepy. A little smug. That low-cut tank top and your golden necklace.
Very unfair.”
Sion exhaled a quiet laugh through his nose.
“That sounds less like a compliment and more like a complaint.”
“It can be both.”
“I see.”
“You were waiting for me to say it.”
“I really wasn’t.”
“You looked like you were.”
“That might be your imagination.”
“Liar.” Yushi smiled and kissed the corner of his mouth.
Sion caught his wrist before he could pull away and kissed the inside of it once, thoughtlessly.
The gesture felt so natural that it hurt a little, in the way tenderness sometimes did when it arrived too cleanly.
Yushi sank down beside him properly this time, and Sion reached past him to switch off the lamp.
The room dimmed into soft shadow.
Outside the window, the city was still awake somewhere beyond the glass, but here everything narrowed to breath and the rustle of blankets as they settled in.
Sion lay back first.
Yushi followed a second later and turned into him by instinct, one arm sliding across his middle.
Sion opened his arm for him at once.
Yushi tucked himself close, cheek against Sion’s chest, one leg sliding between his. The position felt long-learned by now, no longer chosen so much as found.
Above him, Sion rested his chin lightly against his hair.
Yushi listened to the steady heartbeat under his ear.
Somewhere far down the hall a floorboard creaked, then stilled again.
The dorm felt held together by sleeping walls.
“You really missed me that much?” Sion asked quietly.
“Maybe.” Yushi smiled against his shirt.
“You did.” Sion’s hand moved once down his back.
Still speaking, Sion caught the hem of his tank top and started to tug it up.
Yushi lifted his head at once and helped without a word, fingers brushing skin as he pulled the fabric over Sion’s stomach, chest, and shoulders.
For a second he did not look away.
He could feel Sion watching him as clearly as if it were another touch.
“How much?” Sion asked, with that flirty look he only got when he was tired enough not to hide it too much.
Yushi tilted his head just enough to answer without moving far.
“Enough to leave a winning match.”
Sion replied dryly,
“So not that much.”
“That was mean.” Yushi laughed softly against his bare chest.
“It was accurate. You usually win.”
“You’re ruining the mood.”
“You’re the one who brought Minecraft into it.”
“That is because Minecraft is part of my emotional truth.”
“Of course it is.” Sion’s chest moved under his cheek with a silent laugh.
Yushi let his hand drift over the shape of Sion’s chest, slow and absentminded at first, then lower over the hard lines of his stomach.
The touch made his breath catch before he could help it.
He stayed there for another second anyway, then kept the moment where it was instead of letting it tip into something more.
The laughter faded, but the closeness stayed.
“I like this,” Yushi said after a moment.
“This room?” Sion asked, like he was avoiding the obvious on purpose.
“This.”
Yushi loved that too.
He did not always have to translate himself here.
Sion understood the unfinished version of his sentences more often than not.
“The day feels less loud after I come here,” Yushi said.
“Like it finally ends properly.”
Sion’s hand slowed on his back.
Then he bent and pressed a kiss into Yushi’s hair.
It was barely there, but Yushi felt it all the way through.
“You can come here whenever you want,” Sion said softly.
Then, after a beat, lower, with a meaning that settled warm under Yushi’s skin,
“You know I’ll always make room for you.”
Yushi closed his eyes.
There were so many ways to love someone.
Loud ways, obvious ways, difficult ways.
Promises, confessions, grand gestures, hunger.
He had known plenty of those languages before.
But this one was still his favorite. This quiet certainty.
This room with its dim shadows and sheets.
This version of Sion with his tired voice and gentle hands.
This way of being let in without question, as if Yushi belonged here so naturally that the asking hardly mattered.
He shifted one hand beneath the blanket until he found Sion’s.
Sion linked their fingers together immediately, like instinct.
Yushi smiled, small and unseen.
Tomorrow would be noisy again.
Schedules, lights, people.
The bright machinery of their lives would start up all over.
Morning always came too quickly. It asked too much.
But tonight there was still this brief space before it.
Yushi in Sion’s bed, fully welcome.
Sion close around him.
Their hands folded together between them, and as sleep began to pull at him, Yushi thought that maybe this was what made love sustainable in the end.
Not only the wanting, though that mattered too.
Not only the closeness, or the quiet ache beneath it.
This.
The simple, repeated mercy of going to him at the end of the day and finding the door open.